Various Small Flames’

Songs of 2017

Anamon – Kneel Old
Android Automatic – Dark Roads*
Angie McMahon – Slow Mover
Basement Revolver – Johnny Pt. 2
Baxter Roy Long – Paribanou
Bea Troxel – Let Them Know
Big Thief – Mary
Black Belt Eagle Scout – Soft Stud
Bully – Running
Cayetana – Mesa
Charly Bliss – Percolator
Chastity Belt – Different Now
CHUCK – Happy Birthday
The County Liners – Maria
The Courtneys – Tour
Craig Finn – God in Chicago
Crumb – Locket
Crushing – Emery Board
Cut Worms – Like Going Down Sideways
David Bazan – Care
Distant Reader – First Try
Emperor X – God Save Coastal Dorset
Fits – Ice Cream on a Nice Day
German Error Message – 2017*
Gleemer – Soothe Me
Great Grandpa – Favorite Show
Haley Heynderickx – Oom Sha Lala
Hiccup – Teasin’
Horse Culture – Texaco
Illuminati Hotties – ‘(You’re Better) Than Ever’
Japandroids – No Known Drink or Drug
Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit – If We Were Vampires
Jay Som – The Bus Song
Jeremy Squires – Night Cars
Katie Ellen – Drawing Room
Lizzie No – Monuments
Lomelda – Bam Sha Klam
Mike Pace and the Child Actors – Audits & Surveys
Meursault – The Mill
Mount Eerie – Crow
Nice Legs – Mighty Three
Oceanator – Nowhere Nothing
Ohyeahsumi – Daisy
Old Earth – Pit Dynamics
PASTEL – Stammer
Peter Silberman – New York
Phoebe Bridgers – Motion Sickness
Pope – Talk Me Out of It
Protomartyr – Windsor Hum
Rainwater – Place
Ratboys – Elvis is in the Freezer
Rick Rude – Bald & Fat in Houston, TX
Roadkill Ghost Choir – Classics (Die Young)
Rose Dorn – Dirt
See Through Dresses – Lucy’s Arm
Shannen Moser – A Funeral, A Friend, My Sanity
Sinai Vessel – Died On My Birthday
Slaughter Beach, Dog – Phoenix
SOAR – Fort Funston
Soft Fangs – Jordan // Jackson Elementary
Spartan Jet-Plex – We Believe
Strange Ranger – House Show
Strawberry Runners – Garden Hose
Timid, The Brave – Alice
Us and Only Us – Bored of Black
Vagabon – Cold Apartment
Viewfinder – Instant Moonlight
The Washboard Abs – Veil
Waxahatchee – Never Been Wrong
Wild Pink – Albert Ross
William Ryan Fritch – In Our Blood
The Wooden Sky – Swimming in Strange Waters
Ylayali – Cherry Tomatoes

*Strictly released in 2016, but barely, and we covered it in Jan. 2017.

If you missed it, you can see our Favourite Albums of 2017 list here. Also, the curious can find such lists from previous years here.

The post Favourite Songs of 2017 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

In the meantime, check out the mix below to hear everything we covered during June 2017, and click through the links in the tracklisting to be whisked away to the specific posts.

Tracklisting:

Roadkill Ghost Choir – Classics (Die Young)
Julia Lucille – Darkening
girl valley – faceback
Deer Scout – Sad Boy
Crushing – Emery Board
Crumb – Plants
Alex Napping – You’ve Got Me
Squirrel Flower – Daylight Savings
Andrew Younker – Pretend Therapist
Outside The Academy – Anaesthetise
Sammus – Perfect, Dark
Miserable Chillers – Love Theme (For The Wilderness)
Ohyeahsumi – Cosmos Bowling
Maud Scheltinga – I’ve Come to Know You Well
Midwestern Exposure – Riverboat
Will Graefe – Blood Feather
Baxter Roy Long – Purpose Against An Unavailing Balance
Idan Altman – Heroic Bee
american poetry club – how i felt about most things
About a Million – Young Bull
Flamingods – Bhima
Headless Pin Up Girl – Forever Watching the Skies
Wild Pink – Albert Ross

Check out the previous round-up mixes here, and stick around next month for yet another selection of the best new music.

The post June 2017 Roundup appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The duality in atmosphere between the welcoming embrace of the music and an unsettling vibe poking through the lyrics defines the Ohyeahsumi sound. ‘Drag’ is a love song that flits between romantic ideals and physical realities, while ‘Daisy’ plays self-deprecation as an act of defiance, expectations cast aside and trodden into the dirt. Then, while ‘Hey’ could be an anthem for a seventeen your old, ‘Snowflake’ is altogether darker and self-destructive, “love” as a provocation or act of self-harm. Closer ‘Trophy’ feels like a challenge along these lines, accusations made after the delirious days have past, leaving nothing but bad blood and slow-healing wounds.

“You smile like you’re waiting for apologies
Do you want a trophy?

Do you want a trophy for
Breaking my heart?
Do you want a trophy for
Having no heart?”

The release came out earlier this year on Sports Day Records, though its ethereal atmosphere will make a perfect soundtrack to your hot, lazy summer. Buy it from the Ohyeahsumi Bandcamp page.

Cover art by Dina

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Ohyeahsumi – Daisy

Ohyeahsumi are Rena and Lena Vernon from California, a pair who describe their journey as going “from wombmates to bandmates to your mates.”  Their album, Your Friends Are Looking For You, is due out at the end of the month on the ever reliable Sports Day Records, and you can hear the first single, ‘Daisy’ right now. Dark and languid, the track plays like the midnight meandering of some city river, dreamy and dappled with light yet mildly dangerous, as though beneath the fascinating surface lies something altogether more strange and ominous.

“Scared of being pretty
Room is dirty, mind is filthy
My dress curves clearly
At the waist”

Your Friends Are Looking For You is to be released on the 31st March and you can pre-order it now via Bandcamp, including a special edition cassette complete with cards designed by Bronwyn Walls.

Lizzie No – Crying Wolf

Lizzie No is a songwriter and harpist based in Brooklyn who is set to release her debut album, Hard Won, this spring. Written during a “lonely night shift at the box office of a midtown venue in NYC”, lead single ‘Crying Wolf’ is energetic-yet-dark folk song. No’s vocals, led by the music or else leading, possess a repetitive cadence which suggests an almost trance-like quality, a gradually dawning delirium from which wisdom is channelled.

Hard Won is out this spring, so keep on eye on Lizzie No’s Bandcamp page.

Amanda Glasser – Bed

Amanda Glasser is a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter from Baltimore. Not content with her output with her band Purrer, Glasser is set to release her solo debut album, Caelesti Radio, an album which she says “is a light that shines on the difficult emotions surrounding trauma, love, fighting to be heard and moving on.” ‘Bed’ is our first taste of the album and has certainly whet our appetite, a superior slice of bummed out, downbeat indie rock. It’s reminiscent of Low in its use of plaintive melancholy and A Weather in the way it melds the sad and insular rainy-day vibe with swelling instrumentation, primarily throaty guitar and galloping drum beat.

It’s a great introduction and has me anticipating the album impatiently. Keep an eye on the Amanda Glasser Bandcamp page for details.

Batwings Catwings – Sky Blue Haze

LA’s Batwings Catwings make what they describe as “Inspired radio-friendly noise pop with no pretences”. On a recent tour of Japan, the band made a video for the three minute blast of infectious noise that is ‘Sky Blue Haze’, the standout track from last year’s Coast to Coast. The video captures visually what the song does aurally, just a rollicking, no-frills good time that highlights the raw energy of a band with a growing reputation for their live shows.

You can get Coast to Coast now via Broken World Media or the Batwings Catwings Bandcamp page.

Caroline Lazar – Nevermine

Taken from a forthcoming EP of the same name, Caroline Lazar’s ‘Nevermine’ introduces her pop/folk fusion, all built up around striking vocals which gather in slow intensity, the energy and intent inching forwards with fluid force like an approaching tide. By the finale Lazar seems barely held together, her voice positively exploding with a depth and energy beyond her years.

Nevermine is set for release on the 24th March and you can pre-order it now from Bandcamp.

Why a fox – Cleland

Why a fox is the recording project of Australian-native, Japan-based songwriter Hayden Marks. With his debut LP Old forest. Young trees. set for release this April, opening track ‘Cleland’ sets the tempo with a pacey, lyric-filled two-and-a-half-minutes, like a cross of Camp Cope and the Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 soundtrack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsCi5wtlAt8

You can pre-order Old forest. Young trees. now from the Why a fox Bandcamp page.

Brice Randall Bickford – Paro

Brice Randall Bickford made his name with the folk-country band The Strugglers back in the 2000s, before moving back to North Carolina in 2011 and starting to record under his own name. His latest album, Paro, released recently on Keeled Scales explores “themes such as humanity’s tendency toward greed, control over others, systems of government, and the consequences of the adoption of agriculture”. Standout ‘The First Grain’  makes good on this promise, what at first appears a pleasant country-rock song slowly revealing its world-weary literary edge.

“When you cut your teeth on
Whatever you were handed
The first time thinking, I don’t belong
You didn’t know the half of it”

You can get Paro now from Keeled Scales webstore and the Brice Randall Bickford Bandcamp page.

Lizzie Kent – EP

Lizzie Kent is a singer-songwriter from Vancouver, BC, who released her debut self-titled EP last summer. Luckily for those of us who missed it the first time around, the songs are probably more suited to these grey windy days than August’s sun, so now is a great time to right the wrong and get to know Kent’s sound. ‘Secrets’ is a good place to start, a melancholy, nostalgia-filled song where the vocals take centre stage while guitar plucks at the surrounding silence.

“Take me back to just last spring,
when the flowers bloomed and the birds would sing
Take me back to the time in our lives
when all things lost were bound to survive”

You can buy the Lizzie Kent EP now from Bandcamp.

Mt. Doubt – Tourists

Edinburgh-based Leo Bargery, AKA Mt. Doubt, has teamed up with Dunfermline band Foreignfox to put out an AA-side single Tourists / Lights Off, Carry Me Home, out the end of the month on Scottish Fiction. Mt. Doubt’s ‘Tourists’ is best described as a happy collision between The National and The Twilight Sad, Bargery’s baritone vocals and joined by insistent drums and sizeable guitars which sweeps you up within its heft, even possessing a manic Berningerian on-the-verge-of-losing-it shouty finale.

The single is out on the 31st March and you can pre-order it now, though it’s also the first single from a forthcoming EP The Loneliness of the TV Watchers, which judging by the title is a record that’s going to be right up our alley.

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